


winter, spring and summer (autumn never comes)

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bittersweet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the most part, Castiel barely even saw his brother. Lucifer was more of a night person. And sometimes he spent whole weeks out crashing at his friend’s places. Castiel knew he should be more concerned about his brother, but he barely had the energy to see himself through the day. He felt like he was stuck. Just another pebble ground into the bottom of a rut on an old country road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	winter, spring and summer (autumn never comes)

-

Castiel hated winter.

It wasn’t because he had to beg rides from his brother or borrow the car to drive in to work when the snow was too thick to ride his bike. It wasn’t because it took hours with the plow attachment on the tractor to clear the long rutted driveway to even take the car out. It wasn’t because the bitter cold sometimes froze the water lines coming in to the well in the old cellar section of the basement. There were a myriad of reasons for Castiel to hate winters.

But the worst was when Lucifer hosted band practice, and it was far too cold and drafty in the barn out back they usually practiced in so they’d set up in the nicer part of the basement to play. And you could hear it through the entire house. Loud, screeching, angry music. Castiel honestly wondered if they had cultivated their sound particularly to be the levels of annoying that it was - because it was metal after all - or if they were just a really bad band.

This had gone on for the four winters since Lucifer founded ‘In Flames’. There had been a sibling prank battle of epic proportions the first winter when Gabriel was still around. But he had been gone for longer periods on whatever soul searching journeys he took. Every now and then Gabriel would show back up at the old farm house and crash for a few months, then take off again. He had been gone for the past few winters. Like a migratory bird. A sugar fueled hedonistic selfish ass of a migratory bird.

Which had left only Lucifer and Castiel to rattle around in the six bedroom home. Their father had passed almost a decade ago, leaving the house to be dealt with by the children. Michael and Raphael wanted nothing to do with it and didn’t even start petty squabbles about trying to selling it and split the money. They just left Gabriel, Lucifer and Castiel there to atrophy. Anna was no where to be found at the time of their father’s death. Balthazar refused to come to the funeral and abdicated any legal rights or holdings to the estate.

Castiel didn’t have anything better to do with his life. The house was paid off. They sold parcels of old farm land until there was nothing left of the land but the sliver that the house sat on to be called theirs anymore. Several rooms of the house were still stacked with ceiling high piles of hoarded goods that they never bothered to clean out. Whatever ‘work’ that Lucifer did - Castiel doubted any of it were legal - and the meager minimum wage that Castiel earned at the gas station was enough for property tax, insurance, and food. They got by.

For the most part, Castiel barely even saw his brother. Lucifer was more of a night person. And sometimes he spent whole weeks out crashing at his friend’s places. Castiel knew he should be more concerned about his brother, but he barely had the energy to see himself through the day. He felt like he was stuck. Just another pebble ground into the bottom of a rut on an old country road.

The peace and quiet of the warm months, his bike rides in to town and the one gas station on the main road where he worked, the contentment of his little garden on the small plot of land still theirs in the back of the house, it all dwindled down as the leaves dropped and winter descended. He’d heard of something on NPR, seasonal affective disorder, and vaguely wondered if the lack of sunlight in Idaho during winter made his normally sluggish and uninterested state of existence even worse in the winter.

It didn’t really matter as long as he could manage to drag himself out of bed and shower at least three times a week.

If the pipes weren’t frozen.

The cacophony of angry music swelling up through the house from the basement in the wee hours of the morning did not help with the 'as long as he could manage to drag himself out of bed’ part of the equation and his flimsy grip on sanity.

Castiel liked his older brother Lucifer for the most part. Even if he was a bit aggressive, temperamental, strange, and a tad sadistic. It was Lucifer who had taught him how to fight for himself in high school when the nasty mean spirited kids of their small backwards town started bullying him mercilessly for coming out as gay. Lucifer was the one that held down the fort and kept food in the cupboards when their father died - Castiel was sixteen and still in school - and everyone else scattered to the wind. Lucifer was harsh, but he was fiercely loyal, and Castiel loved him.

But he could be an inconsiderate dick.

Castiel generally avoided Lucifer’s friends and bandmates when they were over. He holed up in his room with a good book and ignored them. They weren’t the sort of company that Castiel liked. It wasn’t because they were inordinately fond of leather, dyed their hair bright colors, were heavily tattooed, and cursed profusely. No, Castiel had very particular reasons to dislike each of them. Lilith touched him in ways that made him uncomfortable, even after he’d told her he was gay. Ruby had almost set the house - and barn - on fire more times than he cared to count. Azazel was mean to the stray cats around the house that Castiel fed.

He tried not to judge, but when given a concrete reason not to like a person, Castiel made no excuses for his attitude.

-

It was February. The pantry had been recently restocked after a fierce winter snow storm had blocked them in to the house for almost a week. It was going on midnight and Castiel should be asleep because he had work at seven in the morning. The house was cold and drafty, creaking with the wind outside that pushed through every crack of poorly sealed windows. Castiel, with several pairs of long jon’s and a massive thick sweater, was still cold wrapped up in all the heavy quilts he could tolerate without feeling like he was going to suffocate under their weight.

There was a temporary lull in the mind numbing, nerve wracking noise from the basement. It seemed like Lucifer’s friends had been trying to make up for lost practice time due to the storm by being extra loud and extra disturbing. Castiel doubted he would get more than a few hours sleep that night.

So instead, he padded downstairs to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. That might at least take the shiver ache out of his bones that rattled his teeth. One of Lucifer’s friends was rummaging in the fridge. They must be taking a break. If only Castiel’s head would stop vibrating like they’d banged cymbals right next to his ears.

He turned on the tap to fill the kettle, the noise sudden in the silence that had descended on the house. The guy rummaging through the fridge cursed, jumping and knocking his head on the inside of the fridge before turning around.

“Jesus fuck man, I did not hear you there.”

The fridge was still open behind him, and Castiel would complain of the cold but it was quite possibly warmer in the fridge than in the rest of the house.

“Sorry.”

Turning the tap off, he set the kettle on the stove and leaned back against the counter next to it. The man, who was closing the fridge now, was not someone Castiel recognized. There was usually just Lilith, Ruby and Azazel around the house, but sometimes other friends or stragglers came around.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before?”

A hand was extended for Castiel to shake. The man smiled widely, dimples denting his cheeks, a few studs through his lip and nose, and oh, oh no he was pretty. Although he was wrapped in several layers of plaid and a canvas coat to keep out the chill, Castiel could see color on his skin peeking out of his sleeves and the collar of his shirt. His shiny brown hair tumbled over his shoulders down to the bottom of his - very broad - chest.

“I’m Sam.”

Castiel shook his hand - strong grip, long calloused fingers - and stared.

“You uh, you must be Castiel?”

“Yes.”

“Your brother said you were a bit of a recluse.”

“Did he actually use that term?”

“Well, no, he said you were a depressed old hermit, but, I figured recluse sounds nicer.”

Sam stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen shuffling, hands stuffed in his pockets. Castiel briefly wondered what he had been looking for in the fridge that he’d abandoned.

“And you’re a friend of Lucifer’s?”

“I’m in the band.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I replaced Lilith. I play bass.”

"How long ago?”

“Few months.”

“Hm.”

Sam shrugged, looked towards the basement door, looked at Castiel.

“Well, I should uh, should, probably get back to practice. Nice to meet you.”

Castiel, for his part, remained quiet and watched Sam give an aborted short wave and almost run into the door frame on his way back down stairs.

The tea kept him warm, for a while, but it was long gone by the time the noise stopped around three in the morning.

-

Sam, it turned out, was quite polite and even a bit soft spoken for the abrasiveness that Castiel expected out of most of Lucifer’s friends. They’d met in the kitchen a few times, and Castiel developed the habit of putting extra on for tea at midnight when he heard the band over, while Sam started taking a break to rummage through the fridge at midnight as well.

When Sam learned that Castiel worked early, the band practices miraculously started shifting just a little at a time to the point that they usually wrapped up by one o'clock. Which was certainly an improvement.

Several mornings, Castiel woke to find Sam sleeping on the couch with a mound of old quilts thrown over him. Why he was sleeping on the couch when there were several empty rooms in the house was a mystery. Castiel tried to be quiet in the morning as he got ready for work, but despite how little noise he made, Sam always roused and sat adorably sleepy at the kitchen table to talk to Castiel until he had to leave. Castiel started making breakfast for the two of them when Sam was over.

They talked about not much at all at first - Lucifer, the band, the weather - but Sam eventually divulged more personal information. It wasn’t as though Castiel was trying to pry. He was younger than Castiel had suspected, only nineteen to Castiel’s twenty six. And he was apparently making the rounds of his friend’s couches - homeless essentially - until he could get his feet under him.

Fighting with his father had gotten him kicked out of their apartment, although he had only a part time job and no where to go. That’s why, he said, he slept on the couch instead of taking one of the empty rooms. It was the principle of it. He was on couch tour. It was a serious matter. Couches only until he got his shit together.

Sam was a strange young man.

Castiel didn’t talk about himself much. There was not much to tell. He grew up in a large family on a farm that had dwindled down to just a homestead by the time he was a teenager, he’d lived in one house in the same town for his entire life, he’d only ever had one boyfriend before, he worked at the gas station. He felt like a flat plain square of gray. That was it.

He liked listening to Sam. Although he talked bitterly about moving frequently throughout his childhood, he had no end of interesting stories about the places that he’d been. He could talk Castiel’s ear off about his older brother, who lived several counties over. He loved music so passionately that Castiel had been late to work several days losing track of the time over listening Sam talk about it. Sam was a multi-hued three dimensional kinetic existence. He was captivating.

Lucifer teased Castiel no end of his apparently quite obvious crush on the bassist. Sam complained about Ruby teasing him. Azazel rolled his eyes a lot and played his drums very aggressively.

Castiel knew he liked Sam. He was certain that Sam knew that he liked him. And he was also certain that Sam returned the affection.

Neither of them made a move to do more than talk for some time though. There was a tenuous thread of desire that Castiel could feel thrum between them every now and then, a vague sort of fragile wanting like waiting for the first flowers of spring. But he wanted something more than that. Castiel wanted to know, and be known. In the pre-dawn quietude of the farmhouse when the world was still and silent, it was easy to push secrets and fears and dreams out into the space between them.

-

There was something savage in Sam. Castiel saw glimpses of a brutal reality when Sam ducked his head and tried to hide red rough scraped knuckles, bruises on his face. There was an anger deep in his bones, a need to hurt under the sweet dimples of his smile. Sam was dangerous and he was restless and Castiel did not know him. Castiel saw, in glimpses and fragments, why Sam fit more in to Lucifer’s world than in to his own. They lived in the same house, but they did not share the same reality.

It was not what defined Sam however, it was in no way his sum total. It was a piece of him. Essential perhaps, but often eclipsed easily enough by everything else that he was. With Castiel, his eyes softened and he slumped as though to make himself smaller. To make it easier for Castiel to wrap his arms around Sam. Easier to pull him upstairs. And oh, though sometimes the bruises were bright against his skin even next to the tattoos, he was golden and beautiful in the sunlight that was cast dappled through the lace curtains in Castiel’s bedroom.

Castiel knew that Sam did not belong with him. But they could pretend for a time. He could give refuge with gentle hands and a pliant body and a reverent mouth. For a time, it held, and their mornings were languid indulgent things.

Though Sam kept the bed warm for this winter, Castiel knew that come spring Sam would not stay.

-

Spring came around and ‘In Flames’ started practicing in the barn again. Castiel slept much better. He could still hear the 'music’ into the wee hours of the morning but it didn’t shake the window panes like it did when they used the basement.

Castiel honestly doubted if his brother ever actually thought that his band would succeed in the commercial sense. He just loved his band. A few times in the year they would all pile into Azazel’s creepy black van with their equipment and drive several counties or even states over to play venues, but mostly they played because they wanted to. It was about passion, expression. Castiel couldn’t count the times Lucifer had spun grand speeches about the art of it.

Castiel knew that Lucifer’s love of music had started as the escape of a lonely child who felt alienated in his own family. Lucifer was older than him, and Castiel was still making cakes with mud when his older brother was struggling through his adolescence. But things made more sense to him, when Castiel had to find his own way.

Even though they were practicing out in the barn now that it was spring, Castiel still found a lump of Sam on the couch some mornings. He was better rested, and woke earlier to cook breakfast for the both of them. Sam’s weak protests that he couldn’t pay for it had died out some time ago. Castiel found a strange sort of satisfaction in knowing that the young man had at least one good meal a day in his belly when he spent the night.

And if, on those days that Castiel did not have work but rose early anyway because his body was simply programmed to it, if they still met at the kitchen table for eggs and coffee then moved back up to Castiel’s bedroom. Well. There was a certain sort of air to spring around the farm that set a fever under one’s skin. Something about the sudden bloom of life and hope. Something that felt to Castiel like awakening from his tired cold cocoon and wanting for more. Maybe his wings never grew large and powerful enough to fly away, but he could still enjoy the promises of spring.

He knew there were no promises between him and Sam. There was no more for them beyond the comfort they brought each other in the morning with pleasurable company and the occasional intimacy in the privacy of Castiel’s room. Sam would only sleep on the couch, rather than make promises he couldn’t keep spending more time in Castiel’s bed than was needed for their trysts.

Spring turned to summer and the band left for a tour. Lucifer had no dates to give Castiel for when he would return. Sam said his goodbyes. Castiel watched them disappear on the horizon of flat country land and turned back to his gardens that needed tending. The stray cats that wove between his legs any time he was outside. The big empty house that echoed with every whisper of days gone by.

Sam had dreams bigger than an old farm house and a quiet, tired hermit. Castiel was pressed under the weight of life, stuck like a pebble worked down into the dirt. But Sam was restless. He’d keep rambling down that rutted old country road.


End file.
